[EU] Digital Europe Calls on Establishment of Digital Skills Academies Published

The European Commission has published three calls for proposals under the Digital Europe Programme, with the aim of establishing Digital Skills Academies.

Digital Europe is the European Union’s Programme aimed at providing strategic funding for projects in areas such as supercomputing, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, advanced digital skills, and ensuring a wide use of digital technologies across the economy and society.

The 2025-2027 Work Programme was recently published, highlighting key initiatives to be funded in the next three years, including those related to advanced digital skills.

In this regard, the Commission announced its intention to provide funding for the establishment of new Digital Skills Academies, with a particular focus on quantum, generative AI / AI factories, semiconductors, and virtual worlds, in order to tackle the existing gap in advanced digital skills and increase the digital talent pool.

Concretely, these academies would address the unique skills needs of each specific digital area, ranging from developing higher education programmes to different targeted and modular short-term training and hands-on experiences through sectoral cooperations.

The Commission now launched the first three calls for proposals, aimed at establishing the following academies:

• Quantum Skills Digital Academy (up to €10.000.000)
• Digital Skills Academy in GenAI (up to €7.000.000)
• Virtual Worlds Skills Academy (up to €10.000.000)

The Call document includes detailed information on the objectives, scope, eligibility criteria, and budget.

All Academies should be centred around three main pillars. However, the concrete scope of the three pillars varies per Academy. In general, the three pillars include:

1. Knowledge, education, and training: academia, training institutions, the research community, and industry partners should design and deliver educational programmes (the scope of which depends on the respective Academies) and self-standing training modules (taking into account the European Approach to Microcredentials).
2. Building the ecosystem: partnerships and collaboration frameworks between different types of actors should be established, communication and awareness-raising activities should be organised.
3. Measuring progress: the respective Academies should develop a robust methodology to monitor the evolution of the labour market and the progress achieved in closing the respective skills gap.

Proposals should be submitted by consortia demonstrating complementary roles. The specific consortium requirements vary across the three calls and can be consulted in the call document. In general, consortia should consist of multiple degree awarding higher education institutions and multiple industry partners. Where applicable, research organisations and Vocational Education and Training (VET) institutions are recommended to be involved as well.

The calls for proposals close on 2 September 2025. Once established, the Academies are expected to receive funding for a duration of 24 to 48 months, at a co-funding rate of 50%. Only one Digital Skills Academy per topic will be funded. 

Beyond these three Digital Skills Academies, the Commission will at a later stage launch two additional calls for proposals, respectively for an AI Factory Digital Skills Academy (€7.000.000, to be linked to the GenAI Academy, with a 2026 deadline) and a Digital Skills Academy in Semiconductors (€10.000.000, with a 2027 deadline).

Next to the establishment of Digital Skills Academies, the Commission is also expected to provide funding for the design and delivery of education programmes in key capacity areas, as in previous years. However, such calls are only expected in 2026-2027.

Key Links and Documents

• The Call document outlining the requirements of the three Digital Skills Academies
• Proposals should be submitted by 2 September 2025, 17:00 CET, on the EU Funding & Tenders Portal, respectively:
  • Quantum Skills Digital Academy
  • Digital Skills Academy in GenAI
  • Virtual Worlds Skills Academy
• The European Commission is organising an info day on these calls, on 16 May 2025
• More information on the Digital Europe Programme and its current priorities can be found in the 2025-2027 Work Programme

Interested?

If you have any questions about the calls for proposals and the corresponding application processes, or if you are considering applying, please contact the Team EU/International Education Projects (University Service Education and Research – Function Domain Internationalisation) via eu-educationprojects@ugent.be. 

April 15, 2025, 2:27 p.m.